Why Was Esau Rejected?

(Or, What is the Election of God?)

The easy beginning part of the answer to the question, is that God only calls One Man to Him, because He has only begotten One, and God only sees One Man – Jesus Christ. “THIS is my beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased!” Paul says in Ephesians that when we grow up, we grow up into Him. 1 Corinthians 12 says we are all together the body of Christ, He the same Head in each, and we each individual members of His body. It is not we who live (individually), but Christ Who lives in us (individually and collectively). The life we live in the flesh by the faith of the Son of God (not our “individual” faith), IS Christ.

(At this point, one might wonder, “Well, what about me? If it’s all Christ, where do ‘I’ fit in?” Actually, answering that vital question is precisely what we are looking into here. This is not just information or new doctrine to tickle our ears, but rather we are looking into the revelation of the Spirit in us, which the natural man cannot know, to the “knowledge of Christ” that edifies, fulfilling Paul’s continuous prayers for all of us, that we grow up into Him in knowing, all spiritual wisdom and understanding, “unto a perfect Man.” So, as we go through this, let us keep our eyes on THAT prize!)

Hebrews 1: 5-8

“For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son? And again, when he bringeth in the firstbegotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him. And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire. But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever …”

Jesus Christ is the foremost “elect” of God. He is the “point” where the invisible God, “dwelling in a light no man can approach” (1 Tim 6:16), bursts out by the Spirit into created visiblity, spawning all the realms of creation – spiritual, animate and inanimate. He is the One of Whom it is said, “by HIM all things consist” (Col 1:17). He is “the outraying of the divine,” and is also the “mighty Word of power,” Who frames and upholds all things, both temporal and eternal (Heb 1:3 Amplified).

Anyone therefore, as the Scripture clearly says, who comes into that “election,” comes to it in Jesus Christ and no other. (John 1:6). It isn’t that God is being “exclusive,” as humans think, saying, “my way or the highway.” It is simply that He (Christ) is the only portal from our temporal world and darkened spiritual existence, back to the Father of spirits who originally created us to be living expressions of the One Son. We are “sons,” yes, but only true sons by being in and of the “One Only Begotten.”

We have no real life outside Christ. We live, “dead while we live” (1 Tim 5:6), until, by the Spirit, we see that we are dead (to who we once were), and that our true lives have always been hidden in Him in the eternal (Col 3:3). In receiving Him, we give up the false life we received from our former master, the devil, along with his gift of “the mind set on the flesh,” and in finding Christ within, we find the “mind of Christ,” or, “the mind set on the Spirit,” and in that we find our true selves also.

That is, since the Father only sees the One Son and expresses Himself fully and solely by this One Son, and all those who find their true lives, only find them hidden in Him, it follows that all who come to the Father must be in this One Only Begotten, by Whom we also are “begotten again unto a lively hope ” (1 Pet 1:3).

The Father knows us through that One Man, of Whom we all are (Eph 4:15). We are – branches of His vine (Jn 15:5); dwelling places of His Glory (2 Cor 4:7; 6:16; Heb 3:6; Jn 17:22); vessels of His honor and mercy (Rom 9:21, 23). By our daily walking around in our mortal flesh bearing about in our bodies the dying of the Lord Jesus, His Life is manifest (revealed, declared, verified) in our mortal bodies (2 Cor 4: 10,11), to give Life to the world!

The Son’s Life IS our life. That is why Paul next says, “So then death worketh in us, but life in you.” He was the “lamb for others” and in Him we manifest Him in being the Lamb where we are. “As He is, so are you in the world” (1 Jn 4:17).

Therefore, to repeat, the Life of the Son is the “elect” of God. Wherever the “life of the Son” shows up, there is God’s elect.

What does this have to do with Jacob and Esau? And this seemingly arbitrary thing God has said about them, “Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated” (Mal 1:2-3; Rom 9:13)?

Why was the first rejected, and the second received? As Cain was, whose unrighteousness bore witness to the truth of the Lord’s rejection, so that he rose up against his brother out of his pride of self, which in its rejection, suffered the bitter root of envy and covetousness to explode into wrath and rage, so that he murdered his brother Abel. Cain’s selfish envy had been stirred by Abel’s righteousness, having been demonstrated in his inner humility, by a blood sacrifice of an innocent in his place, testifying not of his own self-attained righteousness, as Cain’s did, but of the mercy, grace and righteousness of God. (Gen 4) When Cain saw Abel received, and he himself chastised, even though he had done his very best to bring an offering pleasing to God, he was filled with blazing wrath. He thought he should have been the one received, not Abel, and his blood boiled over into deadly violence to rid himself of the proof that he had not been accepted of God.

As Ishmael was – born Abram’s son, yet Sarah saw him mocking Isaac, the son of Promise and the true heir, as the flesh always mocks and scorns the glory of the Spirit. He was the son of the bondwoman, and not of the wife. And though he was Abraham’s son, he was nonetheless, at the command of God, cast out with his mother, Hagar, into the desert with nothing to sustain them except a skin of water and a little food, which soon ran out. (Gen 21)

Now what does this human idea of a bondwoman (slave) have to do with Ishmael’s rejection? In human society, a bondwoman’s son could have some inheritance, even all of it, if the father so desired. Before Ishmael was born, Abram had thought his heir would have been the son of his slave, Eliezer.

But the Spirit has something deeper to say here. The bondwoman is fallen Eve, who has been disinherited and fallen into corruption. Adam’s true Wife was Christ, as Eve’s true Husband was Christ. When they fell into separation and temporal “earth-only-ness,” having been secretly invaded by the spirit of error (Serpent/Sin/Satan) as a usurper of that inmost holy place which before had belonged to the Lord, i.e., primacy in their inner selves, they became adulterers with each other in the spirit. The true husband and true wife had retreated, and as to God, in the separation, in the spirit, all their posterity were as if illegitimate. (*Understand, they were not completely illegitimate in their humanity; the real “bastard” was the hidden devil, hidden in a monster of his creating, the lying, rebellious, false self-consciousness of autonomy or independence), which the enemy had insinuated into them. And this is that “flesh mind” that rules the whole earth, and which can never come into the kingdom.)

Paul compares Hagar and Ishmael to Mt. Sinai and the giving of the Law, the Jerusalem of the flesh and not Isaac’s Jerusalem, the Jerusalem which is above. That posterity is forever cursed and cannot ever enter the true Presence, because as in the spirit of Cain, it is born of corruption in separation and will not, cannot, separate from it. Likewise, this false separated self-consciousness, the monster, “mind set on the flesh,” cannot come before God because, as it is written, “no flesh shall enter into my presence.” The only way to get rid of the monster is to kill it.

Therefore, it is obvious, the election is only for the son of promise, as it is written, “In Isaac shall thy seed be called.” Isaac is the son of the true wife, the son of God’s promise, and therefore is the heir of Abraham and the carrier of the Seed of Abraham, the “seed of the woman” (Gen 3:15),which is Christ.

And we must understand, as to their humanity, Ishmael and Isaac were not different from one another. They both stood equal before God. They were both born in corruption, yet their lives were allowed to dissect from one another, that by the contrast we might see how the two lines, the line of the flesh, and the line of the Spirit, are always running together and side-by-side, so that by seeing how it worked in two different distinct people, Ishmael and Isaac, we might see how it truly is in each individual human person.

(But it is not only two lines running in individuals, but the two lines also running simultaneously and intertwined with each other in the historical visible church of Christ. Many in our time have identified correctly the false Babylon of “religion”, as one of the major roots of the problem in humanity. But it is incorrect if we were to say that all “institutional religion,” in the forms of denominations, institutions, buildings, sectarianism, ritualism, house churches, ministries, doctrinal positions, and all the other accouterments of outer “religion,” are the monster in themselves, and all those forms, therefore to be avoided for that reason. Though the false in many cases may be more prominently visible, nevertheless God has nowhere left himself without a remnant. God has His hidden ones in the most unlikely of places, from brothels to cathedrals, and we find Him, and them, in both, and everywhere in between. That is why Jacob Boehme said, “A true Christian has no sect, but is at home in all of them. Every day is Sunday to him and his priest and sacrament are within him.”

Remember, we are the sowers of grace and not condemnation, and need retain no one’s sins, faults, or misinformations as any impediment to our love, which as our Father in heaven, shines on the just and the unjust alike [Matt 5: 43-48]. Jesus likened that to the perfection of the Father, that our light shines liberally and fully on all, regarding no man’s “person,” seeing all as loved and received of the Father, our constant prayer being that they (who may not yet know Him) might come to know Him in themselves, and recover out of the snare of the wicked one, no longer opposing themselves in heart and mind. That is where we may hold them in our faith [2 Tim 2: 24-26].)

The lesson is simple – when Ishmael is cast out, Isaac comes forth! That is the final outcome, the Prize where we keep our eyes! This is the “secret” of Romans 7, because Romans 7’s premise seems to be that we are as two people, a flesh man and a Spirit man, always battling it out, and the flesh man always seems to have the upper hand. It is as if we are left there in that condition, as probably most people have been taught, so that all of life is this desperate battle where we try and fail, but keep trying anyway, and God’s grace covers our “many sins.” And many, probably most, teach and/or believe, that is the best it can get in this life.

But the truth is that these Old Testament stories give evidence to this struggle in our inner selves, by playing out these various themes in the lives of the characters, and give a different conclusion than the ones we normally consider. The Holy Spirit did not give us these histories so that we could psychoanalyze these characters and find their “dysfunctions,” as a means to “fix” the psychological dysfunctions in our own lives. That only leads to confusion and condemnation, if for no other reason than that is a bottomless well, to focus on “fixing” ourselves. No no no!

Every one of these stories, in similar and different ways, testifies to the heart of God, how man (from Adam until now) has become the prodigal, roaming the earth and wasting the Father’s substance. He (man the prodigal) is Cain, the hater and murderer of his own brother. He is Ishmael, disinherited when Isaac came forth, who became the mocker, whose hand has forever been against every man and every man against his (Gen 16:12). He is Esau, who spurned his birthright, counting it less important than the brief filling of his belly.

And of such have we all been. I know I have. Wandering, lost, far from home. Confused, fearful, distrustful, broken, eyes darting this way and that, wary. Guilty of all of the above and then some. Wondering all the time was there something else, or was I doomed to be Cain, Ishmael or Esau?

But wait, that is not completely who they are! God has a plan to redeem them, to bring Adam back, to bring Ishmael back, to bring Esau back, as it is written, “And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly!”

We have all been Esau AND Jacob. The admonition of the Lord, given to Cain when he slew his brother Abel, was that sin was always at his door and he was to rule over, or master the sin (Gen 4:7). In Cain just as in Abel, the sin could have been overcome and mastered the same way it had been mastered in Abel, by the grace and life of Christ which Abel found in his sacrifice. So as to their humanity, all of them having been found in the corruption, none were found good. None were chosen. However, as it pertains to the election, the potential is there in every human person, because He is the light that lights every man who comes into the world.

It is this simply this: no one can be received into the kingdom while entangled with and overcome by the spirit of error and his false consciousness of independence, which is the “mind set on the flesh,” or, more simply, “the flesh.” They are not capable of it, even if God made it a gift to them, which He already has from the foundations of the earth by the eternally sacrificed Lamb.

However, this mindset cannot give itself up. It cannot change itself. It can never go in, because it is lost in the devil’s deception and enanorment of self, and as long as it is lost in this deception, it cannot ever see the kingdom of God. As Jesus said, “Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” This cannot be changed. It is an immutable law. (Not “law” as in legalism, but “law” as in gravity, or as in 2 + 2 always = 4.)

Grace does not change that. Instead, it is by grace and grace alone, through faith, that we are born again of the Spirit. The effectiveness of grace, its accomplishment, is the new birth, and Christ Who is formed in us. Outside the new birth, grace is not known, (it is there but hidden to us). However, the Spirit by grace reaches through the corruption of our separated selfhood, and begins to draw us out by the wooing of the Spirit. That stirring of the Spirit through grace calls every man, but no one may find it, except ultimately he forsake himself, to follow Christ as He is revealed in that person. In so doing, one moves out of Cain, Ishmael, or Esau, i.e., those who are rejected, and becomes Abel, Isaac, or Jacob, or in other words, the elect, Christ, living as us.

Let me mention something that happened to me that drove this point home in the beginning days of my walk in Jesus. I remember back in my high school days, I did a lot of daydreaming, imaginations in my head. One thing about those daydreams back then that I clearly remember, was how I imagined things happening to people I didn’t like, or who had wronged me in some way. I wasn’t particularly good at sports, or in the immortal words of Coach Morris in varsity football, “Pruitt, you’re terrible!” (How good would anyone be, if coach had picked you out to be the perpetual defensive backfield’s practice “tackling dummy?”) So I got my share of teasing and such, and I had no recourse but to retreat into my mind and imagine things that might happen to my tormenters. I would see daggers coming out of my eyes toward them, or some catastrophes that might befall them. I carried around that little mental process through the next few years after high school, and I was very aware of it. It was still active.

But then along came Jesus, and life turned upside down. I remember, maybe 2 or 3 months into my salvation life, I came across this scripture in my little pocket New Testament one day while working at the mobile home factory: “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man.” (Matt 15:19-20). It suddenly occurred to me that I had not been having those murderous imaginations anymore! I hadn’t even realized they were not happening anymore, until I read that verse. I was dim of consciousness of Christ then, but I saw it! Those things were no longer coming out of my heart! I really AM a NEW MAN!

………

Let us get now to commenting particularly about Esau. It might be a little clearer at this point what we are getting to. Humanly, Esau and Jacob were the same. Neither was more righteous than the other in the eyes of God. Yet even before they were born, the Scripture testifies that God has chosen Jacob and rejected Esau, before either had done anything. (This should be enough to show us that the choosing of God has nothing to do with our behavior, attitudes, ambitions, etc., but solely on the grace or election of God.)

Who is this rejected Esau?

Let’s see. We know that he was a man of the earth, an outdoors man, a great hunter. He was successful at what he did, no doubt admired by everyone. And being the firstborn of twins, he was the legal heir of Isaac, with the firstborn’s “right” to the lion’s share of his father’s legacy. Besides the very abundant temporal riches Isaac had received from Abraham, which by birthright were to be Esau’s, the Seed and the blessing of Abraham* should also have been, by right, Esau’s inheritance. He may have been the favorite of his father, since he was a man’s man, and accomplished and successful in his business in the world. Jacob, however, seemed to be a “mama’s boy,” a plain man, “dwelling in tents” (Gen 27: 27, 28). *“In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen 22:18).

Isaac loved Esau and he wanted to give him his inheritance. But Esau had proven himself unworthy of it. He had come in hungry one day from out in the fields, and was so starved he begged his brother Jacob for a bowl of his lentil soup. Jacob, though he wasn’t a hunter, we learn is crafty. So he offers Esau a deal. If Esau will give him his firstborn rights – this is no small thing – then Jacob will give him a pot of soup. That is the meager value Esau attached to his birthright. And isn’t this reminiscent of our father Adam, who traded his birthright for a bite of forbidden fruit? For a bowl of soup, Esau has given away his right to the temporal goods passed on from Abraham, and has proven himself, by that act, unworthy of it. And to further drive that nail into that coffin, his father Isaac is tricked into bestowing the blessing of Abraham, also by right Esau’s, upon Jacob, disguised as Esau, and the real Esau winds up second, though he had been first!

But that is not the end of the story. I think this is one of the most remarkable scenes in the Bible when Jacob comes in to Isaac disguised as Esau. If we can think of Isaac in this case is father God, and can think of Esau, as fallen Adam who has lost himself and his way, we can also imagine the unending love the father has for poor lost Adam.

As a father myself, I know how it smote the heart of God, to cast his children out into the wilderness, to fend for themselves, and close the gates of Paradise, preventing their return. As a father myself, I know the great desire to see and want good things for my children. As a father myself, I know the great heartache I have when I cannot fix their problems. So it is easy to understand Isaac; he longed to give Esau his inheritance; he longed to bless him. But just like father Adam, who lost his inheritance the same way, and because of it was also deprived of the blessing which should have been his, to partake of the Tree of Life, Esau was deprived of the blessing, too, though he sought it with “many tears.” Esau, Cain, Ishmael, the flesh monster man, (infected with the spirit of error and completely vain in its imaginings), could never go in.

At this point, this is a tragedy, isn’t it? But God has slipped this little story in here, this odd story of Jacob putting on skins to disguise himself as Esau, to receive his father’s blessing by craftiness, stealing it from Esau.

Frankly, in human terms, this is scandalous, and a great injustice. No wonder Esau was angry. Jacob had taken advantage of him when he was hungry and now he had stolen the only thing he had left, his father’s blessing. But it was more than just scheming Rebecca and Jacob at work here. The Holy Spirit is the author of these stories, as well as the author of the lives of these characters. And it is the work of the Spirit here, that we are to see, rather than some good and evil principles that man can derive for himself out of the stories.

God was demonstrating, through this seemingly deceptive act by Jacob in tricking his father into thinking he was Esau, a far greater principle behind these common human situations, than figuring out the good or evil of them.

In the “good and evil” world, Esau was lost. He had been conned out of his firstborn’s birthright, and deprived of his father’s greatest blessing by Jacob’s treachery. How could his brother betray him like that? What just court would not side with Esau?

But we do not live in the good and evil world! So our sight is on what the Spirit is doing here, and forgetting for a time the historical Esau and Jacob.

When we leave the good and evil and the historical Jacob and Esau for a time, we are able to see all this in a completely different setting. The Holy Spirit in this little story is demonstrating the miracle of grace, the miracle of salvation, the miracle of redemption, the miracle of reconciliation. Putting aside what Rebecca thought, what Jacob thought, what Isaac thought and what Esau thought, picture this scene.

We have Isaac sitting in his tent, his eyesight is gone, and he’s asked that Esau be sent out to kill some game and bring him some of his venison stew that he loves. He says that after he gets the stew, he is going to give Esau his blessing. He loves that Esau makes this stew from his kills. And Esau is the man at home in the Earth, even as God the Father originally made Adam to be home in the Earth. He longed to eat of the of the fruit of the earth that Esau would bring him and in that he was delighted with his son.

(In the same way the Father desires to eat of the abundant fruit of the earth from His Son, but Adam lost himself and the divine image retreated, and he had become a different image, and could no longer till the earth for its true fruit, sons and daughters of the Spirit, carrying in them the same divine image that Adam and Eve were in the beginning. When they lost that image, their begetting of the Spirit was lost also, so that they could only bring forth earth children, flesh of flesh, with only dim memories of their past glory.

(It is important to understand the totally qualitative difference between Eden [Delights] and the world into which they were sent out. Because we DO know that world into which they were sent, since it is our world, too, we see the Garden in a childlike way, sort of like being in a tropical paradise, man and woman frolicking naked, naming animals, eating of all the fruit of the garden, nothing whatsoever forbidden to them, except that one tree … And then afterward we see sort of the same Adam and Eve, thrown out of the world’s best resort, wearing animal skins, dirty faces, sweaty brows, scratching in the cursed earth for their meager survival.

(But what we are to see in this story is of far greater glory than we can imagine. It is of the quality Paul described in 1 Cor 2:9, saying, “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” We cannot even imagine the paradise of Adam and Eve, since it was so different from the quality of this world, that we cannot even conceive of it in this world’s terms. It appears a simple children’s story, and in that appearance it is hidden from the mind of man. However, Paul goes on to say, “But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God” (1 Cor 2:10). So it is good for us to see past this children’s story to what the Spirit is telling us, because if we realize the enormity of the fall and even dimly comprehend the total qualitative difference between Eden and our current reality, we begin to realize that there is something far greater at work here than just forgiveness of sins.

(So let me put the point forward that when Adam became the official “First” Adam, that is, after the Garden he became the “natural” man, “earthy, of the earth,” we might also say the same that Peter boldly proclaimed on the Day of Pentecost, that “by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God,” (Acts 2:23), Adam the first was delivered up that Adam the second might appear. And it is the Last Adam who redeems the First Adam. From the foundations of the earth God has had His eye on Adam, knowing his origin, knowing his fall, and finally through what Adam learned and experienced in the fall, knowing his ultimate restored glory, which is even a far greater glory, exceedingly above all we could ask or think, than was the first Paradise.)

Now back to the story.

After a time someone comes in to Isaac and announces himself to be Esau. To Isaac he doesn’t sound like Esau, but his eyes are so dim he can’t tell. So he asks him to come closer so that he could feel his skin. Esau was a rough hairy man the Scripture says, but Jacob was a smooth man. As we know his mother, Rebecca, put goat skins on his forearms, so that when Isaac felt them, it would feel like it was Esau.

Genesis 27: 21, 22

“And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not. And Jacob went near unto Isaac his father; and he felt him, and said, The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.”

I was on one of our trips in 2007 or 2008 with John. We were finished and headed home. John dropped me off to meet Janis in Nashville, where she had been visiting our daughter, Jessica. While on the trip, all this about Jacob and Esau had been stirring in me. As Janis and I headed north on I-65 back the 200 miles to Louisville, I began to share with her what I was seeing. It had come from my reading of Jacob Boehme’s, “Mysterium Magnum,” his exposition of Genesis. As we rode up the highway, these things were exploding in my spirit and pouring out of my mouth. I began to tell her how I had seen something absolutely amazing in this little scene in Isaac’s tent, with Jacob disguised as Esau, receiving his father’s blessing in Esau’s place. I told her about how much Isaac loved Esau and wanted to give gifts to his precious son and to see him do well. I told her about how tragic it was, that Esau had spurned his birthright, and I told her how it was the same with our first father, Adam. How Esau was as Adam, lost in the world, disinherited, becoming a wild man in the earth. How sad for Esau. How sad for Adam. How sad for Isaac. How sad for the Father!

And then I began to weep when I told her what transpired between Isaac, and Jacob disguised as Esau, how I saw it all, saw everything, saw everything about redemption, everything about the plan of God, when Isaac, after feeling Jacob’s- as-Esau’s arms and smelling Jacob’s-as-Esau’s neck and delighting in the smell of the field and the earth on him. Dear father Isaac was taken aback at Jacob’s first reply to him, because he expected Esau, but it sounded like Jacob. And even when he brought him into himself to touch and smell him, to convince himself that this was indeed Esau, he uttered one of the most glorious sentences ever uttered by man: The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.”

The reason I wept is because I finally saw what the Lord has done in its completion. Well, maybe not everything, but surely a whole dimension shift for me. I began to weep as I saw how far the Father’s and Son’s love extended, and to what depths the Son went to bring me back into fellowship with Himself and the Father. What had he done? He had – has – donned our identity with which to stand before the Father, and receive the Father’s blessing in Himself in our identity and person, declaring Himself to be ME, and YOU, in the heavenly court of the Father!

He asks us to come forward because He does not recognize our form. While in this life we still wear the form of Cain, of Ishmael, of Esau. It hangs on us as our “outer man,” though it is not the same as it was, because since the new birth it has been under new management. It is now part of those “members” of our humanity that we now recognize as His, given for His use. Nevertheless, such a rough, earthy crusty exterior, with the ways of the earth hard bound to us, is unfamiliar in the Father’s sight! What we have become is not His original design. He asks who we are. We reply in our own voice, “I am Fred, my Father, and this that I am is all I have to give you.” But the Father hears something different than what we have spoken. Though our form is strange to Him, He hears something wonderful in our voices, because behind each of those individual distinct voices, underneath the rough exterior hide of the earth, He hears a familiar voice, an Eternal Voice, and He smiles and laughs delightedly at the sound of That Voice! The Voice of the Beloved! The beloved Son, who does all His will, has become not just Son of God but also Son of Man! Though man is not inherently “divine,” nevertheless the Father hears the divine voice of the Son coming from this rough form of the earth. “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau!” Hallelujah!

Do we see what has happened here, what God has revealed in this common story of sibling rivalry and human treachery?

What Esau had lost and could not restore for himself, his birthright and blessing, because he had spurned it and proven himself unworthy of it, God restores to Esau, in Jacob, disguised as Esau! Who was Isaac, in his heart and mind, blessing? To Isaac, until he realized his error, he had given his blessing to Esau. But Jacob had come in and stolen it away from him by craftiness, and in the Genesis story Esau never gets it back, though he still does pretty well for himself in his worldly business.

But our story is not limited to the flesh Esau and the flesh Jacob. In our Spirit story, Jacob disguised as Esau, is as Jesus disguised as us. We could not rescue ourselves from our dilemmas, all of us lost and alone and no hope. And in that condition, having no strength in ourselves to hang on, Another steps in and lifts us, Another steps in and embraces us, Another steps in and becomes strength we do not have. Another steps in, and in my voice, in my form, declares Himself to be “me” before His Father in heaven. And I realize that when seen in this Light, as the Father adores the Son and the Son adores the Father, that the Father wholly sees “me” in the Son and sees no difference between “me” and the One Son, and all I can think is, “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes!”

This little story encapsulates the whole truth of the grace of God.

We really only have scratched the surface of all this, but we must wrap it up here with this conclusion. As we mentioned above, “And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly!” ( 1 Cor 15: 49). This is what it is all about. Like Cain, like Ishmael, like Esau, we start out as men of the flesh. We do not know anything else. We all bear the image of the earthly. But what of it? Because as certainly as we have borne that image of the earthly, does it not also plainly say that in the same way we shall bear the image of the heavenly?!

The image of the heavenly is prefigured in Abel, in Isaac, in Jacob, as well as many others until He came, Who had created the image, as Christ Jesus. When Jesus came among us and finally completed His mission, the Last Adam was fully revealed in His Life.

Paul again encapsulates it so perfectly:

“And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.” (1 Cor 15: 45-48).

The first Adam was made a living soul. Centered in myself. The last Adam was made a quickening spirit. A river of living water, providing the Lord’s abundance out from himself, out of His own unending abundance within him. This second man is the Lord from heaven.

Well, folks, if you’ll have it, this is us! And it seems like we’re all on schedule!